‘Most of my incestuous relatives, who can’t stand the fact I’m intellectually superior to them. And my greengrocer, when I explained to him that sweet potatoes are from the morning glory family and not the nightshade family. Then there was my apparently well-read neighbour when I explained that the word “uniquest” doesn’t exist because unique is an absolute adjective. And lastly, my colleagues, who can’t stand the fact that I possess more expertise than the whole department put together. The colleagues, however, tend to add on a “blue-blooded” before Smart Arse.’ And with that he concluded his speech. ‘Is Nik your real name or is it short for something?’
‘My parents couldn’t afford any more,’ replied Nik tersely, fed up with the small talk. ‘Could we maybe leave the fraternising to another time and concentrate on the reason I’m here?’
Balthasar shrugged his shoulders. ‘Where’s the body?’
‘Coffin’s at the back entrance,’ said Nik.
‘Push it round into the common room, please.’ He signalled towards a small room with chairs, a table and a coffee machine. ‘I’ll go ahead and forge the paperwork,’ he said with a wide grin.
‘You do that often?’
‘What, forging paperwork?’ Balthasar chortled again, as if Nik had asked him if the earth revolved around the sun. ‘Best you don’t know the details,’ he said, settling down at his computer.
On his way to the entrance Nik asked himself what on earth he was doing there. First of all, he’d killed a colleague. Then he’d used that dead colleague’s computer account to search the CID network illegally. Then he’d broken into Munich’s Ostfriedhof garage, exhumed a corpse and lied to two colleagues while stealing that corpse. With the help of a dubious hearse driver, he’d then brought the dead body to a corrupt pathologist, who openly admitted forging documents, despite the fact Nik worked for the CID. All things considered, he thought grimly, his misdemeanours of recent years were child’s play compared to all of this.
Nik pushed the coffin into the common room and set off home. It was six o’clock in the morning and there was nothing else he could do at the institute. His work was done.
Now it was down to oddball Balthasar to find some clues.
Nik didn’t manage to sleep more than four hours. The exhumation had shaken him and he kept dreaming of Kathrin’s grave. In one dream, her coffin wasn’t in the ground, and in another, Tilo’s corpse was down there. He couldn’t remember his last dream but when he woke up, he still had the sickening smell of the pathology lab in his nose. His body was yearning for rest but his mind could not stop replaying the events of the last few days. There was no point staying in bed.
Nik’s back was sore from all the midnight coffin-pushing, so he allowed himself two aspirins with his morning coffee. Yawning, he shuffled into the bathroom, where he trimmed his beard and the hair that was falling over his eyes. After a short shower he went into the living room and observed the mountain of files that he’d gathered over the last few days. So much paperwork and he still had more questions than answers. But before he could work any further on the case, he’d have to wait for the autopsy results. He stuffed his hat, scarf and winter jacket into a large bin bag, slipped on his shoes, pulled on his leather jacket and left the house.
It had stopped snowing and the pavements had been cleared. The cold in his face was invigorating. He lit a cigarette and relished the warm smoke in his lungs. He had moved barely five metres when a woman in a thick coat joined him, looking him up and down accusingly.
Nik sighed.
‘Why d’you look more knackered on your days off than when you’ve got work?’
‘I had to exhume a body and bring it to the pathologist.’ Nik conveniently omitted the fact he’d done this outside his function as a CID inspector. ‘And since I can’t shift the stench of dead body from my jacket, I’m getting rid of it.’ He went over to the used-clothes container, threw everything in and headed towards the supermarket.
Mistrust crept across her face. How did she always know when he wasn’t telling the truth?
‘Why are you still wearing that?’ she asked, pointing to the heart-shaped locket hanging on a silver chain around Nik’s neck.
‘It was Mum’s. Isn’t that reason enough?’
‘I don’t have a problem with its emotional value. I have a problem with the stuff inside it.’
He shook his head. It was apparently impossible to hide anything from his sister. Nik tugged on the locket and opened it up. ‘It’s just a little tablet,’ he said.
‘Nik, that’s horrible.’ She took a step backwards. ‘Why do you do it?’
‘Freedom of choice.’
‘Freedom of choice?’ Mira repeated. ‘So poison lets you choose freely, does it?’
‘This isn’t just any old poison,’ explained Nik. ‘This is cyanide. Two seconds and it’s all over.’
He looked at the pill. It was barely bigger than the nail on his little finger but it was deadly. ‘I’ve lost control of my life. At least with this I get to have some control over my death.’
She stared at him in utter disbelief.
‘It’s comforting to know that when it all gets too much, I can just swallow the cyanide and it’ll be over. No more worries. No more problems. Just an eternal sleep. Wonderful, isn’t it?’ He closed the locket.
‘How did you even get your hands on that stuff?’
‘In a drugs raid,’ answered Nik. ‘And it wasn’t just coke and heroin in the hideout. There were weapons, ammunition and a small bag of cyanide tablets. I was in charge of the inventory, so I pocketed one.’ He shrugged his shoulders.
‘What the hell is wrong with you?’
‘Mira, I’m tired,’ he said with a sigh. ‘I just want to go shopping. Then, I’m going to bed so I can get some rest before work tomorrow.’
She raised her eyebrows, which Nik took as an act of approval. She stood still and watched him go into the supermarket. And by the time he came out again with his shopping, his sister had disappeared.
His phone rang. He put down his carrier bag and answered. ‘Nik Pohl.’
‘This case will go down as having the sloppiest post-mortem examination in the history of forensic medicine.’ It was Balthasar.
Nik could hear the agitation in the pathologist’s voice. It was a mixture of indignation and hysteria.
‘Formally, everything is perfect,’ he continued. ‘Even the smallest of details was recorded in the report. Livor mortis, rigor mortis, even abnormalities on the facial skin. The problem isn’t how the examination was conducted. It’s that any inconsistencies were deliberately ignored.’
‘OK, what else?’ Nik leaned against a wall and pulled a cigarette out of his pocket with his free hand.
‘Kathrin had two injuries which could have arisen from a fall. One on the face and one on the back of the head.’
‘OK. And how could that have happened?’
‘Either she was hit on the back of the head with a rock and then fell, landing on her face, or, she hit the back of her head on a rock while falling, turned over and fell face first.’
‘Unlikely, but not impossible,’ said Nik. ‘But that rock face is really steep. If she fell, she’d probably have scratched herself, but not suffered severe injuries to the back of her head. There aren’t any overhanging rocks to hit on the way down.’
‘Well, that’s definitely one good indication she didn’t hit her head during the fall,’ began Balthasar, ‘but I also found tiny wooden splinters in the back of the head, and that’s after her body was washed and prepared for the funeral.’
‘But maybe she hit her head on a branch when she fell?’
‘Well, I’m not an expert on the trees in Flintsbach, but I very much doubt there are any that contain adhesives, dissolving agents and colour pigments.’
‘The wood was coated in varnish?’
‘Just a small amount but enough for the mass spectrometer.’
‘So Kathrin was hit on the head with a piece of w
ood?’
‘Yes, a hundred per cent.’
‘OK. Sounds like a climbing accident just turned into a murder case.’
Chapter 5
Nik read through all of Kathrin’s paperwork again. Officially, there wasn’t anything wrong with it. As the death had been classified as unnatural, a medico-legal autopsy had to be performed on the body. This took place one day after Kathrin’s death. The German Criminal Code stipulated that two doctors had to be present at such an autopsy, and at least one of them had to be a registered pathologist. The registered pathologist at Kathrin’s autopsy was Dr Beate Cüpper, who worked at the LMU’s Institute for Forensic Medicine. Originally from Ulm in the south of Germany, Dr Cüpper got her doctorate in Medicine from Freiburg University. Her first position as a doctor was at the Forensics Institute at Würzburg University, and in 2011 she moved to Munich, where she still worked today. She received an award for her PhD and was a member of the German Society for Forensic Sciences.
Nik found very little information about Cüpper online: three entries about events at LMU, some photos on Facebook and some handouts from a presentation she’d given at the University of Bern. Not nearly enough to build up an accurate profile and nothing to suggest she was having difficulties in her private life or at work. Nik found a couple of minor driving offences in the Flensburg traffic register. But other than that, her record was squeaky clean. Going by her publications, Cüpper was a very proficient doctor, and this only made Kathrin’s mediocre autopsy seem even more dubious.
Nik wasn’t a fan of conspiracy theories but everything he’d come across over the last few days had just added to his suspicions. The enquiries he’d made into Viola’s case had pushed his colleague Tilo to kill an innocent stranger and to very nearly kill Nik as well. And then there was Kathrin Glosemeier’s case – similar to Viola’s in so many ways – where a competent and renowned pathologist apparently forgot everything she’d ever learned during her highly successful career.
There was nothing questionable about the death certificate and if it weren’t for the exhumation, Nik wouldn’t have had any reason to criticise the pathologist. And that meant any aggressive enquiries were out of the question. The desecration of Kathrin’s grave still hadn’t made the news. Officially, she was still buried in the Ostfriedhof.
Speaking to police and investigators would be something Cüpper had to do on a regular basis. A couple of questions weren’t going to spook her. Nik would just need to make sure he used his best CID-guy-next-door tactics when questioning her. And stage one of that involved a shower, a clean shirt and some mouthwash.
The doctor lived in a beautiful detached house in Munich’s Pasing district, not far from the city park, with views of the Würm river. Two steps led up from a small garden to the front door. The windows were made of safety glass and fitted with burglar-resistant fixtures and lockable handles. The halogen motion sensors would make any creeping around very difficult. There was a reinforced door panel and a high-grade lock. Burglars would think twice before trying to get into this house.
There was a light on in the kitchen. According to Nik’s research, Cüpper was single, so it had to be her in the house. He rang the doorbell and a woman of about forty, with full lips and a delicate snub nose, opened the door. She was wearing very little make-up and her black hair was tied up in a ponytail; she looked older than the photograph on the LMU homepage, and noticing the wrinkles on her forehead and around her eyes, it was clear to Nik that the picture had been Photoshopped. Nik could tell from the way her blue eyes squinted at him that she was probably short-sighted, but as there were no tell-tale dents on the sides of her nose, it was likely she normally wore contacts.
Apparently he’d interrupted her while cooking, as she was wearing a black apron over her white blouse and was holding half an aubergine. On her wrist was an Oyster Perpetual Rolex adorned with diamonds. While LMU pathologists were certainly paid more than CID officers, their salary still wouldn’t be enough to afford a 35,000-euro watch.
‘Yes?’ Her voice was deep and powerful. She was standing up tall with a straight back, looking Nik directly in the eyes. He held up his CID badge.
‘Inspector Pohl, Munich CID. Would you happen to have a moment for me?’
‘Do we have an appointment?’ asked the woman.
‘No,’ Nik replied. ‘And of course, I would have normally just gone to the institute but there’ve been some developments with a case, you see, and you were in charge of the autopsy.’ He forced a smile. ‘I need to hand in the preliminary report by early tomorrow morning and need your opinion. It’ll only take five minutes.’
She stood silently, regarding him with raised eyebrows, making it clear she was not impressed with the interruption. But finally, she stepped to the side and let him in.
‘As long as you don’t mind if I cook while we speak.’
Things didn’t start to look any cheaper after stepping inside Cüpper’s house. The ground floor consisted of one large open-plan living space that stretched from the front door back to the garden patio. There wasn’t a single wall, just one large supporting column in the centre of the room. The floor had been laid with light tiles that matched the furniture and the designer kitchen glistened with expensive chrome. There was a replica of Neo Rauch’s Vater hanging on the left wall. Or at least it was probably a replica.
All the ingredients for a vegetable bake were set out on a cooking island with a polished marble countertop. Deep-purple aubergine sat on a chopping board already sliced and waiting to be used. And beside that was a baking dish with tomato sauce topped with mozzarella and boiled eggs. Everything looked top quality. Probably not just your regular packaged, supermarket range. Whatever the case, Nik couldn’t spot a single plastic bag or container lying around anywhere.
Nik was relieved the pathologist showed no intention of asking him to eat with her. The only thing he hated more than a vegetable bake was a vegetable bake with aubergines.
‘So, which case are you talking about?’ asked Cüpper, slicing another aubergine. The oven was preheating and its light formed a warm glow behind her.
‘The case goes back to 15 August 2016,’ Nik began, sitting himself down at the kitchen table. ‘That morning the body of a young woman was found near Flintsbach. Her name was Kathrin.’
‘Doesn’t ring any bells. Can you tell me anything else?’
‘The body was found at a climbing crag called The Quarry.’
‘Ah, yes, the climbing accident,’ she went on casually. ‘What about it?’
‘How certain were you it was an accident?’
She stopped slicing. ‘Listen, I take my job very seriously. If I determine a death as accidental, it means I’ve ruled out all other possibilities. Did you read the report?’
‘Yes,’ replied Nik. ‘But I still wondered why she had severe injuries on her face and the back of her head.’
‘Can happen in that kind of situation. One injury is caused during the fall and the other on impact.’
‘But the right side of The Quarry is really steep. If you fall there, the only thing you’re going to hit is the ground. Not any rocks.’
‘Aren’t there any small trees there?’
Nik nodded.
‘Well, they could have caused the injury.’
‘But no bark or leaves were found in the back of the head.’
Cüpper salted the rest of the aubergine and placed it in the baking dish. ‘Inspector Pohl,’ she said, sighing, ‘I’m a pathologist, not an investigator. I can barely even remember the case. If I concluded that Kathrin Glosemeier died falling, it means I found nothing to suggest third-party involvement.’
She sprinkled parmesan over the aubergines and put the dish in the oven. ‘We deal with numerous unexplained deaths every day. You can’t expect me to have every single detail from each case in my head. That’s what the report’s for.’
‘Of course,’ Nik responded. ‘But if you can barely remember the case, why did you remember
Kathrin’s surname?’
Cüpper pursed her lips. ‘What are you suggesting, Pohl? Are you trying to blame me for this woman’s death?’
‘I just want to know how you and the scene investigator managed to miss some very obvious discrepancies. Things an amateur would have seen.’
‘Then you should ask the investigator.’
‘He’s up next.’
‘Why are you opening up this case again?’
‘As long as you keep lying to me, that’ll have to stay my secret.’
‘And how d’you know I’m lying? Because of the two wounds? I could show you ten falling accidents where the person had injuries all over their body. Front and back. So many injuries I couldn’t tell which one had killed them.’
‘I’ve read other reports from you and they are all far more detailed and precise than Kathrin Glosemeier’s. And if you’d taken a closer look at the head wound, you’d’ve found little bits of varnished wood. Not really something you’d expect to see after a fall. After a fight perhaps.’
‘How do you know about the varnished wood? I never wrote about it in my report.’
‘Magic.’ Nik cast an imaginary wand with his hand.
Cüpper glared at Nik and let out one long, loud breath. ‘You need to leave.’
‘That won’t help you, you know. I’ll just ask you to come into the station. Whatever the case, this conversation isn’t over.’
‘I think you overestimate your power a bit, don’t you?’ she asked with a snicker.
‘I know Kathrin Glosemeier’s half-arsed autopsy wasn’t just coincidence. Somebody made you do it that way. Somebody very powerful. More powerful than I’ll ever be. And I know the case will probably be closed again before I can write the word “varnish”. But d’you know what?’ Now he snickered. ‘I’m going to play really dirty here. I’ll take the files home with me, beef them up and send them on to a couple of bloodhounds in the press. You know, the kind of journalists who’ve always had it in for the police and who’d sell their own grandmother for this kind of story. And I couldn’t give a flying fuck if I go to jail for it. And you . . .’ – he pointed a finger at Cüpper – ‘. . . you’ll go down with me. Because no matter how powerful this second employer of yours might be, I’m sure they really wouldn’t like this kind of publicity. And at some point, they’re going to need a scapegoat. And it’s not going to be me.’
Broken Glass Page 8